Exam Preparation Strategies

Here is a short video with tips and advice for exam preparation.

Carefully identify areas to revise, listen to your teachers and ask them what areas you need to revise on and try to ask their advice as to what is likely to be in the exam.

• Use good quality revision material, e.g.:
  • recommended websites and clear and comprehensive notes
  • clear and comprehensive lesson notes
  • answers to sample questions.
• Look for connections - choose areas which overlap with other areas on the syllabus
• Think strategically e.g. a three question exam requires at least five areas of revision.
• Revise topics rather than questions. (The same questions will not be set twice but, clearly, the subject matter will remain constant.)
• Make sure that you understand the material you’re revising — we can only remember what we understand!
• Write things down. (Tests have shown that you can remember what you write up to 5 times more as compared to what you read.)
• Take notes from your revision material a minimum of three times.
• Refine the material each time you write it. Ideally this process will result in a checklist of between 10 and 15 points for every topic. (Lists are much easier to memorise than large bodies of text.) You can then transfer the checklists to index cards.
• If diagrams are used during the course, use them to record the main assumptions/areas of knowledge they represent or describe.
• Number your points. For example, if a topic has six properties, you can use six as a memory jogger. This is much easier than trying to remember an indefinite list.
• Revise your list(s) repeatedly.
• Remember, practice, practice and more practice is the key!